


Enthusiastic Consentacles

by IndigoNight



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Deaf Clint Barton, Enthusiastic Consentacles, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secrets, Tentacles, implied scientific experimentation, implied tentacle-sex, minor permanent injury, typical winter soldier recovery stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 23:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15230382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IndigoNight/pseuds/IndigoNight
Summary: Clint has a secret from the rest of the Avengers. A secret boyfriend. A secret boyfriend who is a formerly-brainwashed, ex-assassin tentacle-creature. Who maybe also used to be date Captain America.Clint's life is complicated.





	Enthusiastic Consentacles

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Winterhawk Big Bang 2018. Thanks to the mods for organizing the event. Massive thanks to [claraxbarton](http://claraxbarton.tumblr.com) for the [beautiful art](http://claraxbarton.tumblr.com/post/175671630770/and-moar-art-for-winterhawkbigbang-for).

“No means no, Nat,” Clint says as firmly as he can manage, his phone pinned awkwardly between his ear and shoulder in a way that is both precarious and makes the external part of his off-duty hearing aid dig in uncomfortably. “Look, maybe next week we can take Steve out to a rodeo bar and see how many sexist pricks we can get him to pick a fight with. But tonight? I am beat, and I’m staying in.” Clint has finally managed to fish his keys out of the depth of his pocket - seriously, he has equal amounts of beef with whoever decided that  _ all  _ jeans should be skinny now and the person who still put practically knee deep pockets in them - and he ends up being more focused on not dropping them, or the stack of pizzas he’s carrying, or his gym bag all over the hallway than he is on listening to Natasha’s response. Which, is actually probably a good thing because Natasha is  _ dangerously _ persuasive and Clint genuinely does not want to be persuaded right now. 

“ _ If _ I did go out,” Clint insists, cutting her off as he manages to jam the right key into the lock on his apartment door with only mildly terrifying tilting of the precious pizza, “I’d just end up falling asleep on the bar half way through my first beer. We didn’t all get special stamina from crazy Russian and/or German scientists. I am old and tired, so I am going to lock myself in my apartment, get very naked, and spend at least the next twelve hours in a pizza coma.”

Natasha - stubborn bastard that she is - probably would have kept trying except that Clint feels more than hears a sort of slithering from inside the apartment. A second later, his door opens seemingly of its own volition with - what turns out to be the wrong key after all - still clasped ineffectually in Clint’s hand. 

“Who beat you?” The hulking shadow looming at him in the doorway maybe should be terrifying except for how all Clint wants to do is immediately give up on everything he’s holding to be wrapped up in that wiggling mass. Luckily, Clint and Bucky are on the same page about that because three smooth, cool appendages are scooping the keys, pizzas, and gym bag respectively out of Clint’s hands while eight other appendages are coiling up Clint’s arms, legs, and around his waist to draw him into the apartment.

“What?” Clint asks distractly, torn between nuzzling into the soft tentacles curling around him and attempting to reclaim at least one of the pizzas.

“You said you’re beat. Who beat you?” Bucky repeats, his voice like a Russian-accented shiver down Clint’s spine - the accent usually only comes out when Bucky is worried or upset, which is a clue that Clint should stop swiping for the pizza and pay attention to what Bucky is both saying and mind-projecting into his brain. A pair of thin, graceful tentacles are wiggling around Clint’s ears, checking his hearing aids. Clint doesn’t usually wear his aids at home, when it’s just the two of them; as long as Bucky’s got at least one tentacle around him - which is  _ always _ \- Bucky can communicate with him telepathically, no ear required. But brain-communication takes energy and focus that Clint doesn’t have right now, so he pauses in his pizza-focused endeavours to bat the tentacles away and keep his aids for now.

“No one. It’s an expression,” Clint explains distractedly as he goes back to reaching for the pizza - in his defense, he has spent the past three hours getting chased around by a super soldier, a norse god, and the Hulk, he is  _ fucking starving _ . Also, Bucky tends to be a pizza hog. Honestly, he can’t be completely sure whether Bucky is fucking with him or not. Despite the gaps in Bucky’s memory still, he’s (re)adapted pretty well to modern human life, but sometimes idioms and metaphors can throw him off. 

But also, on the other hand, Bucky  _ really likes  _ fucking with Clint; so does Steve, Clint has figured out, though that isn’t particular to Clint. Steve really likes fucking with everyone, pulling the whole old-man-stuck-in-the-future-and-is-the-internet thing - and he’s good at it too, the man’s been out of the ice for over three years now and he’s still got several people, Tony included, convinced that he doesn’t know how to text. Fuck, it’s like those two assholes are made for each other, which is… a whole other thing, a thing that Clint keeps trying to convince himself to convince Bucky to deal with, and then chickening out on.

Bucky, thoroughly ignoring Clint’s squirming, just tightens his tentacles around Clint’s legs and… oozes them toward the counter to deposit the pizza. Six more tentacles are wiggling their way under Clint’s hoodie and around the waistband of his jeans which is  _ unfairly distracting _ . Bucky may respect Clint’s decision to communicate non-telepathically for now, but he is apparently intent on enforcing their unspoken  _ clothing not recommended _ policy; Bucky himself is barefoot and shirtless, just wearing a pair of Clint’s old sweats, which is a whole  _ other _ kind of unfair.

“I was just telling Natasha that I’m too tired to go out with her tonight,” Clint insists. He half heartedly slaps away the tentacle that had - for some reason - started wiggling around in his armpit. “Stop, you know I’m ticklish there.”

“You don’t seem tired,” Bucky says, his eyes narrowed with accusation, but the accusation is softened both by the removal of the armpit-tentacle and a hot, greasy slice of pizza being deposited into Clint’s hand - by a hand, instead of a tentacle, though it is the metal hand, which then reaches up to cup Clint’s face. The metal hand is almost shockingly cold and hard in comparison to the velvety-soft warm touch of the tentacles, but Clint doesn’t mind a little contrast. Bucky’s grip on his face is firm, but careful, metal fingers cupping Clint’s cheek while the metal thumb rests just under Clint’s chin; Bucky uses that leverage to tilt Clint’s head back to an  _ almost _ uncomfortable position and in leans in close -  _ almost  _ uncomfortably close - to stare deeply into Clint’s eyes. Bucky’s head tilts, and then his mouth splits into a grin. “You lied,” he declares gleefully.

Clint scoffs and manages to shake off the metal hand just enough to cram half of the pizza slice into his mouth at once. “No shit,” he says around the greasy bread and chewy cheese. “Well, not about all of it. I do fully intend to lock us in the apartment and be very, very naked for as long as possible.” He grins wolfishly around the half chewed pizza in his mouth, a look which Bucky gleefully returns. “But yes, otherwise,” Clint continues, “it was a  _ partial _ lie. It’s not like I could tell her that all I really wanted to do was hang out with my formerly brainwashed, ex-assassin boyfriend having a mindblowing amount of kinky tentacle sex, you know, since you’re a  _ secret _ and refuse to let me tell anyone that you’re here.”

“That’s sweet,” Bucky says. He hoists himself up so that he’s sitting on the kitchen counter next to the pizza boxes, his tentacles dangling around him like a wiggly cloak, as he starts digging into his own slice.

Clint opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Which part?” he asks suspiciously. He hooks his ankle around the closest bar stool and drags it over so that he can sit down without dislodging any of the tentacles still wrapped around his body.

Bucky pauses - an entire half of a pizza folded up and halfway into his mouth - and tilts his head as though considering. “The sex part,” he answers, deadpan. “Also the keeping my secret part,” he adds with a crooked grin before turning back to his pizza.

Despite Bucky’s apparent total focus on the pizza, four of the tentacles are making effective work of stripping off Clint’s hoodie and t-shirt before starting to wiggle their way into his jeans. Clint grunts, reaching down with a half formed intention of pushing the tentacles away, but instead he just ends up petting them, because they’re soft and it’s soothing and it helps to unwind some of the residual tension from a hard day of training. “Fine, don’t stop doing that,” Clint says, talking as much to the tentacles as he is to Bucky’s face. Then he takes a deep breath and - before he can think it through and talk himself out of it again - takes the plunge, “but since you brought it up - let the record stand,  _ you  _ did, not me - I think maybe it’s time we talk about that.” Clint reaches out to a snag another piece of pizza and ends up attempting to disentangle the entire box from a mass of small but surprisingly strong feeler-tentacles. “Bucky, I swear to god-” Clint snaps, and the tentacles let go so fast that Clint almost slams himself in the face with the pizza box. He huffs, but sets the box down and piles two slices on top of each other like a sandwich. “Don’t get me wrong, the whole clandestine secret tentacle-creature boyfriend thing is super fun.”

“And the sex is mindblowing,” Bucky interrupts, his self-satisfied smirk just a little bit forced.

“And that,” Clint continues, struggling valiantly to keep them on track. “But it’s been like a year and half, and I don’t know how much more of Steve’s sad, mopey ass I can take.” 

Bucky freezes, then puts down his pizza. His tentacles - disappointingly - withdraw from Clint’s pants, though they end up coiling around Clint’s waist in a facsimile of a hug. Clint feels a little guilty for pulling out the S-word on Bucky in the middle of dinner, but he’s been letting Bucky avoid this discussion - and by  _ letting  _ and _ avoid _ Clint means  _ getting his mind blown by tentacle sex _ , but tomato-tomahto - for months and something has to change eventually. “Is he really that bad?” Bucky asks quietly, the words have the weird vibration around their edges that means he’s forgotten to use his mouth-parts to speak and is projecting directly into Clint’s brain again. A faint tingle that isn’t quite pain buzzes around Clint’s temples, but it’s gone after a moment and one of Bucky’s tentacles starts petting Clint’s head soothingly to make up for it.

Clint sighs, looking away from Bucky to focus on carefully tearing a piece of crust into very small crumbs. “Well, he’s a lot better than when he thought you were dead, I guess,” he grumbles. “And he has mellowed a little bit since you left him that tape of you dismantling that HYDRA base a couple of months ago. Also, I guess you were right about not cutting out the parts where you dismembered thirty HYDRA agents with your tentacles - Steve found that strangely delightful in ways that I am not going to question.” Full disclosure, Clint didn’t entirely mind watching Bucky rip apart nazis with his tentacles either, but Clint is  _ definitely _ not going to think too hard about that reaction either.

“Told you.” Bucky smirks, but it’s definitely forced this time, the words ringing hollow in Clint’s brain. Bucky’s quiet for a few minutes, his shoulders hunched and the tentacles that aren’t still wrapped around Clint dangling down from the counter to trail across the floor in a distinctly melancholy way. “But it’s not enough, is it?”

Clint drops the remains his pizza crust and groans as he pushes himself to his feet - mostly because Thor accidentally threw him into a wall earlier that day and only a little bit because he’d opened up the can of worms and now has to deal with complicated emotional stuff. He shoves the stool aside and carefully wades through the pool of tentacles trailing over the carpet in front of Bucky so that he can fit himself between Bucky’s sweatpants-clad legs. “He worries about you,” Clint says, “... and so do the others, more or less for different reasons,” Clint adds with a half apologetic shrug. He leans in to wrap his arms around Bucky’s waist; Clint gives himself a moment to savor the feeling of Bucky’s skin against his own, since he’s here, and it  _ has _ been an excruciatingly long day. He find the joints where Bucky’s tentacles protrude from his back and he starts carding his fingers through them in the way that he knows will turn Bucky into a puddle of purring goo. “But the point is, Steve misses you. And it would probably help him to know that you’re, you know, shacking up with me, safe and sound, and not out… living under a bridge or being experimented on by mad scientists again or something. He’s your best friend.”

Bucky huffs. “We haven’t even actually talked to each other in like seventy years,” he grumbles. But Clint can feel Bucky starting to melt against him and the tentacles wound around Clint’s waist are taking a renewed interest in his belt buckle.

“That’s kind of exactly my point.” Clint so desperately wants this conversation to be over; just as desperately as he wants Bucky to quit fucking around and just take off his pants already so that naked times can begin.

Bucky hums. His tentacles have finally defeated Clint’s belt buckle, and another set of feelers are stripping away Clint’s sneakers and socks. “If I promise I’ll think about it can we be done and go have sex now?” Bucky asks, leaning in to nip a  _ very rudely distracting _ line along the curve of Clint’s clavicle. 

“Do you promise to think about it for realsies?” Clint asks, his voice coming out choked and going high-pitched at the end of his sentence as a thick tentacle gets impatient enough to take a deep dive down the back of Clint’s pants.

“Absolutely,” Bucky murmurs. Clint gets half a second of vertigo as suddenly he’s scooped up off of the floor, but then he’s too wrapped up in Bucky’s tentacles to care and they’re oozing smoothly towards the bedroom while Clint’s pants end up in a discarded heap on the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> TBC.... the rest of the fic will be posted over the course of the next two weeks (9 July 2018 - 23 July 2018). Stay tuned ;)


End file.
